School education in India needs intensive care, not a quick fix 1 Devendra Kothari PhD Population and Development Analyst Forum for Population Action Abstract: Unless education is rescued from the quagmire of mediocrity, all talk about realizing India’s demographic dividend will be without substance; and the country would be inching closer to socio-economic disaster. Right to Education with quality must be available to all, since deep frustration begins with half or low quality education. The paper argues that the enjoyment of the right to education could be enhanced if there is an acknowledgement of the problems that beset our educational system and if there is a willingness to solve such problems. The paper explores issues which need urgent attention. Introduction: “Education is future”. 2 For India, that carries a special vibrancy, since we are frequently reminded of our “demographic dividend”. The team led by Harvard economist David Bloom, who coined the term, argued that “population age structure, more than size or growth per se affects economic development . . . if the right kinds of educational, health, and labor- market policies are in place”. 3 In other words, the concept is based on the premise that what matters for a nation's economic growth is not the size of the population but its age structure backed by the right type of human development policies. It is projected that by 2025, over one-third of Indian population (around 500 million) will be less than twenty years old, as per the UN Population Division. That is great news because these Indians are either already born or about to be born. This demographic fact has important implications for the labor market. They represent the national strength, vitality and vigor. If properly educated or trained, they can become the custodian of our national hope, since it is not enough to have lots of young people — they need to be properly educated to fully contribute to the growing economy. After all, as the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), rightly said: “The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid”. The promise of “demographic dividend” will not last long. Can India take advantage of this demographic window in the next couple of decades? Are our education systems geared to meet this challenge today? One cannot be too optimistic about considering its poor education system from bottom to top. The Harvard economist Raj Chetty argues that “improving school education, especially elementary education, rather than just college education in India, is likely to be a key answer to the problem”. The paper aims at analyzing present state of school education in India by using secondary data, and argues the that unless education is rescued from the quagmire of mediocrity, all talk about developing a skilled human resource pool and realizing the country`s demographic dividend will be 1 Paper is being commissioned and published by the Rajasthan Adult Education Association, Jaipur. For further information, contact Prof. Devendra Kothari at 098291 19868 or dkothari42@gmail.com . 2 While presiding over the P.D. Agarwal Memorial Lecture 2013 on Frontiers of Higher Education, Dr. R.A. Mashelkar expressed his views on importance of education. For details, contact: Indian Institute of Health Management Research, Jaipur. 3 David E. Bloom, David Canning, Jaypee Sevilla. 2003. The demographic dividend: a new perspective on the economic consequences of population change. RAND. 1